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Ten Commandments for Building a "World-Class" Infrastructure

The first step in resolving many of the organization, people,
and process issues in today's IT environments and building a world-class
infrastructure is to establish the right methodologies to support a mission-critical
production environment. These methodologies have proven to be effective in many
Fortune 1000 companies. Very simply put, these methodologies are key to ensuring
and preserving RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability).

In today's global network environment, the 10 methodologies discussed
in this article are key principles to a successful organization. These are critical
elements to building a world-class infrastructure for the new millennium. I
like to refer to them as the "The 10 Commandments of IT."

NOTE

In order to ensure follow-through and adherence throughout the entire organization,
executive sponsorship is a requirement.

I. Honor thy customers and communicate with them often.

Don't just talk about improving communication. Don't rely on
monthly or quarterly get-togethers. Network computing has destroyed what little
communication there was between IT and its customers and internally within IT,
especially between the applications-development and infrastructure-support
organizations. There needs to be a process that promotes and instills effective
communication practices on a daily basis.

We recommend using a process that brings together key IT staff and their
customers as new systems are being deployed from applications development into
production. We refer to this process as production acceptance. You can
find a detailed explanation in our book
IT Organization: Building a Worldclass Infrastructure
(Prentice Hall PTR,
2000, ISBN 0-13-022298-4).